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The Battle for Normandy
by Antony Beevor
The definitive account of the Normandy invasion by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945
From critically acclaimed world historian, Antony Beevor, this is the first major account in more than twenty years to cover the whole invasion from June 6, 1944, right up to the liberation of Paris on August 25. It is the first book to describe not only the experiences of the American, British, Canadian, and German soldiers, but also the terrible suffering of the French caught up in the fighting. More French civilians were killed by Allied bombing and shelling than British civilians were by the Luftwaffe.
The Allied fleet attempted by far the largest amphibious assault ever, and what followed was a battle as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. Casualties mounted on both sides, as did the tensions between the principal commanders.
Even the joys of liberation had their darker side. The war in northern France marked not just a generation, but the whole of the postwar world, profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe. Beevor draws upon his research in more than thirty archives in six countries, going back to original accounts, interviews conducted by combat historians just after the action, and many diaries and letters donated to museums and archives in recent years.
"Beevor combines extensive archival research with a remarkable sense of the telling anecdote." - Publishers Weekly
"Beevor has written an in-depth campaign history...that should be read by beginners and experts alike." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. His account of atrocities on both sides, of errors committed and of surpassing bravery makes for excellent - though often blood-soaked - reading. Beevor gets better with each book." - Kirkus Reviews
"Beevor is singularly expert at homing in on those telltale human details that reveal just what it would have been like to be in Normandy in the summer of 1944 . . . His description of the first American landings, at Omaha Beach, is quite terrifying." - Mail on Sunday (UK)
"Beevor tells it all with the soldier's eye for what matters on the ground as much as with the historian's for the broader understanding of events." - The Times UK (Book of the Week)
"Beevor's previous books on the siege of Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin led us to expect something special from D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, and he does not disappoint . . . .The chapter on the Omaha Beach landings is almost the literary version of the opening scene of the movie Saving Private Ryan, with the same horror and pace." - Sunday Telegraph (UK)
"There is no writer that can surpass Beevor in making sense of a crowded battlefield and in balancing the explanation of tactical manoeuvres with poignant flashes of human detail ... dramatic, exciting, well-paced and lucid." - Daily Express (UK)
This information about D-Day was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Antony Beevor is the bestselling author of five nonfiction books, including The Battle for Spain, which won the La Vanguardia Prize, Paris After the Liberation: 1944-1949, Stalingrad, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, and The Fall of Berlin 1945, which received the first Longman-History Today Trustees' Award.
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